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They built the city and named it Centum.

For weeks there were no stoplights. Instead, there were only blinking yellow lights, and I played chicken with the oncoming traffic at every crosswalk on my way to work at a hagwon on the 39th floor of an office building. It should have been simple to get from one building to another—turn right, walk straight. And yet, I would get spun around on the big, wide sidewalks. I would take the wrong turn, cross the wrong street. Everything was so angular, so tall, and so metal, that I could imagine—beam for beam, pane for pane—this city’s birth inside of a plexiglass dome.

Let me be clear: Centum City is not a real city. It is a part of Busan, a port city on the southeastern tip of the peninsula, where the South Korean and US armies fled during the war. Half of the peninsula pushed into the city, building makeshift houses out of plywood and cardboard to block out the wind and rain. The older architecture of the city still reflects the need for function over form. Houses stack on top of one another, steadily ascending mountain slopes in scattered assemblages to accommodate the stream of refugees that did not seem to stop.

Centum exists in the future perfect: it will all have been worth it. The developers promise jobs and money in figures so large they lose their meaning. Eight trillion won. Two hundred thousand jobs. They razed an old airport to create a new city, a highly controlled, urban planning project meant to entice tourists and venture capitalists alike. There is, now, to the north, a Shinsaegae, which has the distinction of being the world’s largest department store, with a Spaland, an ice skating rink, and a multiplex. To the east there is BEXCO, a cavernous convention center that plays host to car shows, ophthalmology conferences, and art exhibitions. The developers of this place named themselves and their project Centum, Latin for “hundred”—the city of 100 percent.

I stood at the first intersection where there are four coffee shops at each corner, locked in an eternal stand-off: a Starbucks, a Caffe Bene, an Angel-in-us, and a Tom ‘n Toms. It is a triumph of capitalism to suggest that there is a choice in the matter. Of course, I adjusted, and I chose. I chose the Caffe Bene because it had a balcony. I would sip green tea in clear glass mugs alongside women with thin calves and pale skin. I joined a gym and exercised at 4 p.m., before the after-work rush began. I wandered under the fluorescent lights at the Fresh Market in the basement of the Shinsaegae, filling my basket with overpriced nectarines and pale chicken breast wrapped in cellophane. I eventually learned I could do all of these things without getting lost or forgetting what to do.

I lived in a hotel room on the ninth floor. It had a washer, a small kitchen, a television, and an Ethernet cable. The furniture was cheap and smelled of antiseptic, and the carpet was a lurid beige. There was never enough sunlight, no matter how wide I spread the jacquard blackout curtains. I cooked my meals on the electric flattop and watched variety shows on the flat screen. I streamed porn on my laptop and jerked off. Sometimes I would wander naked to the window, where I could see the shiny black carapace of the unfinished building across the street, the hotel’s neon lights dancing across its surface.

I was reading Open City, and I found myself, like Teju Cole’s flaneur, a man adrift in his own thoughts. I tried to leave Centum. I took the subway and walked around neighborhoods where the ground was littered with the familiar detritus of flyers for kiss rooms and whiskey sets. I ate porky stews with noodles from restaurants that boasted fifty-year old recipes. I sat on the sand, staring at the bridge on Gwangalli Beach. I tried to write, but couldn’t follow a thought for long enough to see where it would lead. I had a home, many homes—in Seoul, in New York, in Florida—and I had left them and could not remember why.

I logged onto the Internet and searched for others like me. I never found them, but I invited them over to my hotel room anyway. I texted one of them to come over around midnight as I was leaving a birthday party for someone I didn’t know. It was pouring rain that night, and I remember his shoes squished as he took them off at the edge of the carpet. Do you want a beer? I’m sorry you came all this way in the rain. He shuddered. (Was that a no?) He asked if he could shower and I said he could. He was thin and slight and when he took his clothes off, I could see the bones in his back as clearly as the fine teeth of a fish’s spine. As I fucked him I looked down at his face to see his eyes searching for the corner of the ceiling. There we were, fucking away our loneliness.

Centum would wind down around seven p.m., once the office workers had gone to the beach for round two. I would venture out to the garishly lit convenience store on the next block, but take the long way, tracing the criss-crossing grid like a gerbil that has mastered its maze. The sidewalks were unnaturally clean, and even though it was summer, the wind would hiss through the streets. I would stand with plastic bags filled with bottles of tea and chocolates shaped like mushrooms, staring at the empty facades advertising plastic surgeons and dentists. This is what struck some deep anxiety inside of me: the knowledge that it is entirely possible to lose yourself when you are alone.

One of my last weekends in Busan, I was wandering the streets of Seomyeon, flanked by bars and restaurants full of things that I wanted to drink and eat, and I felt a vague foolishness realizing that I would leave without having gotten to know the city at all. I wanted to keep walking, go down to the gay neighborhood, get a drink, maybe two, maybe meet someone, maybe have sex. Instead I took the subway back to Centum City and stared at the feet of a woman wearing a pair of green sandals with two red beads dangling like cherries.

Alex Jung can be found in his Brooklyn apartment watching Korean soaps in his drop-crotch pants. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Morning News, Salon, and The Rumpus. You can follow him on his Tumblr.

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Events

Four Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm)
Tuesdays, August 8, August 15, August 22, and August 29
Fees & Payment Options:
$220 General / $200 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of ten students.
Why you should take this class: Writer & Director Darine Hotait bridges the gap between literature and cinema due to her genuine fascination and devotion to both. A mentor in numerous screenwriting workshops at film festivals and institutions such as the Med Film Festival in Rome, Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam, Mizna Literary Gathering in Minneapolis, among others —Darine invites you to learn how to take the elements that construct a screenplay into development: act structure, character development, and scene breakdown.
Class Description: Develop your screenwriting skills with award-winning writer and director Darine Hotait, whose films screened at top international film festivals, received multiple Best Fiction awards and were acquired by Sundance TV, AMC Networks & BBC Channel. Her feature screenplays were selected at Cannes Film Festival's International Scriptwriters' Pavilion and were among the top 5 finalists at Hearst Screenwriting Competition. She's the recipient of the AFAC cinema grant and a current literary fellow at New York Foundation for the Arts.
Over the period of 4 weeks, writers will be guided through the process of developing a feature film screenplay using various hands-on exercises. Participants are expected to have a one-page storyline that they wish to develop into a feature film screenplay during the workshop. REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Darine Hotait is the writer and director of various short films Beirut Hide and Seek (2011), and I Say Dust(2015), which screened at over 70 international film festivals and received multiple Best Short Fiction awards. Her films received prestigious distribution and were acquired by reputable platforms such as AMC Network, Sundance Channel, BBC Channel, Shorts International & The Journal of Short Films. Her debut science fiction feature film project Symphony of a Flood was selected at the International Screenwriters' Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was a finalist at the prestigious Hearst Screenwriting Competition at San Francisco Film Society.
Her plays and short stories have been published in numerous publications in print and online. Darine has mentored over 50 screenwriting workshops around the world at various institutions and international film festivals. Since 2010, Darine serves as the founder and creative director of Cinephilia Productions in New York City, an incubator for the development of writers and filmmakers from the MENA region.
Praise for I Say Dust (2015)“The film’s power and beauty comes in its subtlety. The story’s intensity and potency lies in Darine’s ability to sing cinematic brilliance in the interstices between scenes and to reveal more about the characters in their silence. The plot is unsaturated and always in dialogue with the audience: what is strategically unpictured by Darine is viscerally felt by the viewer.”
— Leena Habiballah, Qahwa Project, US“The characters are complex, the writing – interspersed with poetry – is so touching, and the shots so poignant it just seems like a damn shame it’s a short rather than a feature length film.”
— Wided Khadraoui, Kalimat Magazine“There is romance, sweet and ephemeral - an encounter more potent, perhaps, for the sense of coming home. A thoughtful film which packs a lot of ideas into a tight space, I Say Dust speaks well to the talents of those involved. It’s no surprise that it has multiple awards to its name.”
— Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (Edinburgh)..

Four Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm)
Wednesdays August 9th, August 16th, August 23rd, August 30th
Fees & Payment Options:
$200 General / $180 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students.
Why you should take this class: Poet Sally Wen Mao, award-winning author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013, BOMB Magazine, Poetry, and more. You can explore Lavender Town in The Margins and check out the feature in Bustle listing her as one of the best poetry debuts in the last five years. Sally Wen Mao invites you to re-invent language and to re-invent the familiar in this protest poetry workshop.
Class Description: We are living in a senseless political era. How do we react, as writers, artists, and citizens? Where do we channel our anger, our protest, our ideals – how do we do right by our art and our politics? In this workshop, participants consider the political poem and examine the ways to approach resistance through language, lyric, and form—in poetry or in lyric essays. Drawing from contemporary poets like Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Timothy Yu, Srikanth Reddy, Solmaz Sharif, and Claudia Rankine, we will examine over the course of several sessions the tools we can use to dismantle the powerful narratives that silence and oppress – and in that process, discover our own political voice. This course will include writing exercises and generative sessions as well as a workshop.
REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Sally Wen Mao is the author of OCULUS (Graywolf Press 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets & Writers, The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, among others. Her poems have received a Pushcart Prize and published in Tin House, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2013, and A Public Space, among others.
​”​Linguistically dexterous and formally astute, Mao’s tight and textured debut ​[Mad Honey Symposium] ​conjures an absurd, lush, occasionally poisonous world and the ravenous humans and animals that travel through it. . . . With echoes of Glück and Plath, Mao generates stunning landscapes where the flora and fauna reflect her presence and strength of voice.​”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“In Mad Honey Symposium, Sally Wen Mao offers delicious diction: ‘archipelago . . . arpeggios;’ ‘horntails / swarm the wax leaves;’ ‘Fetal and feral, we curl;’ ‘mouth on your pendulum;’ ‘in the rigmarole of lucky living—!’ She also offers a heightened attention to how words work and work out in various contexts. The poet takes us all over the place in time and geography—from her mother’s bed to Audubon’s dreams to sputnik to hive and back again—all in the service of feeling deeply. A lovely debut collection.”
—Kimiko Hahn..

'I glanced curiously at the stranger. He looked old and frail. The sky outside the window seemed darker with his figure in profile. Though he was sitting next to us, he appeared to be somewhere else entirely.'